God Squad: Avoid being jaded by religious fanatics
I consider myself blessed to have been raised by parents who taught us that all people are cherished and blessed by God. While embracing our own faith, we learned respect for other beliefs, and were encouraged to look for similarities and embrace differences among people. We've raised our children in the same way. I felt we were all traveling toward the same ultimate destination, though our paths might be different. In recent years, though, I've found my own teachings difficult to follow. Watching some of the events occurring around the world and being witness to extreme fundamentalist beliefs have challenged my open acceptance. For example, what I see as gravely inhumane treatment and oppression of women and brutality toward others in the name of God fills me with anger and disgust. Can [you] help me reconcile my feelings? I'm finding it harder not to be judgmental.
- B., via e-mail
I agree with you that these are hard times for mainstream religious folks. Religious fanatics are getting most of the media coverage.
However, remember that extremists attract more attention than the tolerant and the wise. My experience is that religions produce far more compassionate people than cruel people. Visit any soup kitchen sponsored by a religious group, and your faith will be restored at least a bit.
Another piece of advice I would humbly offer about supposedly intolerant religious practices is to try harder to see the positive, even in religious practices with which you disagree.
Like you, I believe that God wants my daughter to have the same spiritual horizons as my son, but I'm not so quick to castigate religions that preserve gender-specific rituals and divisions. I believe, for example, in marriages born of romantic love, but I also understand the spiritual value of arranged marriages; their divorce rate is lower, and happiness within them seems just as high as in romantic marriages.
I believe in men and women being seated together in prayer, but I understand and respect religious practices that separate men and women in prayer services. This separation can produce gender solidarity and reduce the distractions to focused, intense prayer.
As to more egregious cases of discrimination and brutalization, I'm definitely on your side. Anyone who uses God to justify the murder of innocents has not understood the will of God. And those who believe that mainstream religions teach murder are slandering the most civilizing force the world has ever known: faith.
As one final bit of advice, never treat a believer the way you treat a belief. It is not proper to condemn a believer, but it is perfectly proper to condemn a belief. Believers, unless they physically harm someone else, are made in God's image and must be respected for that reason alone. However, some religions do seem to me to be misguided, magical, authoritarian, or triumphalist, and I have no qualms about saying so.
I've never felt insulted or degraded, for instance, by Christians who take issue with my non-Christian beliefs, as long as they affirm my right to hold them as a child of God. Such disagreements, if approached with respect, can produce understanding and compassion, not rancor and insults.
We can agree to disagree without becoming disagreeable. This doesn't mean we should become weak in our faith or hesitant to proclaim its truth to our broken world. Pray that religious people who do practice physical violence will discover the love their faith proclaims that can melt away the hatred and violence they've embraced.
God is not through with any of us.
A note to readers: Thank you for your many compassionate responses to my recent column on the death of a pet. Some of you recommended pet bereavement groups where people who've lost beloved pets can receive comfort. (Your veterinarian will probably know of groups in your area.) C., of Bethpage wrote to commend the work of Medea Berkman, who runs such groups (she can be reached at pawtoheart.org).
As with all grief work, it's better to be a stick strengthened by being bundled with others rather than vulnerable to being broken alone.
A., from New Haven, and others wrote about deep guilt feelings caused not by the natural death of a pet, but by pets being put to sleep because they were "inconvenient" or because they were adopted by another family that then put them to sleep for suspicious reasons. Such circumstances are particularly painful and should remind all those who consider adopting a pet that this should never be an impulsive decision. Unless you're prepared for a 10-to-15-year commitment to a dog or cat, don't get one! Stick with goldfish.
